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Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Martian Technology (Background)

Martian Technology

All local Martian technology is based in some way on the Ancients' technological achievements. Only the recently-arrived Colonists possses their own independant technological, scientific, and manufacturing principals.

The Obligatory Sci-Fi Crystal!

Before their apocalyptic civil war, the Ancients possessed fantastically advanced science. They had technology enabling them to open gates to other worlds, genetic engineering allowing them to modify their slave races, anti-gravity machines, cold fusion, direct energy weaponry, force-fields and other wonders. Most of their population and industrial base vanished in the war, but for the thousands of years after, they have remained the only civilization with a true mastery of science and technology. They still possess their walkers, their fliers, and their weapons -- but whether they can still produce them, no outsider knows.

The Free Humans rely on scavenged or bartered Ancient technology to maintain their civilization. A human city requires one critical item to maintain itself -- the Fabricator. The Fabricator device pre-dates the civil war, and the Free Humans have scavenged many working examples from ruins over the cetnuries. When fed raw materials, it synthesizes several advanced construction materials, which the Free Humans craft by hand into their devices. Among these materials are a variety of resilient, light weight synthetic substances, anti-gravity strips and crystaline energy emiters and lenses. The Free Humans use the emitters and lenses in constructing blasters and foreceilds, and the strips in building thier fliers. The synthetic materials find use in armor. In addition, all Fabricator products have a variety of civilian uses. Because the materials are shaped by hand tools, they often resemble primitive items -- but they are made of advanced materials.

Energy to power their devices come from electricity stored in capacitors. The smallest cities rely on their Fabricator to provide electricity as well, as it encorporates a cold fusion plant, and requires only water to operate. Free-standing Power Matrices also exist, each containing a redundant plant. The Fabricator can also fashion solar panels.

Because the Free Human Cities rely on Fabricators to survive, Ancient raids usually seek to capture or destroy these devices and other advanced technology. However, ruins are everywhere, containing undiscovered Fabricators and Power Matrices. Ancients themselves will sometimes deign to trade a Fabricator or Power Matrix to favored human bands. Sometimes the Free Humans will cripple an Ancient Walker or flyer and strip it of advanced components which they cannot duplicate, such as Matrices and Heat Rays.

Forging

The Brutes exist at a much lower technological level than Free Humans. They rarely possess the skill or expertise to operate a Fabricator. Moreover, their nomadic lifestyle means such Fabricators they do possess must remain behind in fortified manufacturing camps. Brutes rarely utilize crystal or field generators, but Fabricator synthetics form the barrells and locks of their firearms, the plating for their armor, the membranes of their survival filtration gear, and the skin of the tents and saddles.

Colonial technology is based on earthly manufacturing techniques. The Coloniasts have found plenty of iron, steel and copper in the ruins of the Ancient cities, and they have learned to smelt and shape the some of the softer Fabricator synthetics. As yet, the Colonists do not possess a Fabricator, nor do they understand the principals of their operation. Given their contact and trade with the Free Humans, they may soon learn.

Colonists rely on organic materials for their fuel source. To their delight, they have found that the organic sludge and carbonized chunks buried under most ruins can be easily processed into oil for their machines. Only a few Colonists realize that these compounds are, in fact, residue of the verdant life that once covered the planet before the Ancients' civil war.